A Conversation With ... Grant Miller

Tell me about Springfield Glass’ current projects and how you’d categorize your project volume.
Our backlog is good. We’re getting as many (projects) as we want. We’ve got the Citizens Memorial Hospital job in Bolivar – that’s a really nice glass job. The [Ozarks] Coca-Cola office edition down here on Packer Road, Reed Academy for Springfield Public Schools, Mercy Orthopedic Hospital addition down at Ozark. We have about 50 jobs at any given time. The educational market is huge right now, and post-secondary is the biggest part of that.

What about the design trends that you’re seeing? It seems like glass facade is popular, as well as more glass interior finishes.
Definitely. With percentage of the exterior of a building, glass is taking a higher percentage of that than in decades past. I think some of that has got to do with labor, like masonry. It’s hard to find labor, it is hard to find bricklayers, so it affects the job schedule. It’s helped push design toward more glass. The design trend is the glass itself is getting bigger. Big as they can dream it. They’re 10 feet tall and six feet wide.

Dealing with larger pieces of glass, is that leading to investments to your operations and infrastructure?
To handle the larger glass, we’re definitely utilizing more equipment. We’re having to warehouse and store material much longer to protect pricing. Pre-pandemic, we would focus more on just-in-time delivery, but now it’s getting it ordered because you don’t know when the next erratic price increase is coming. That’s a big investment of ours is just space.

Are you renting space off your campus?
Currently, we’re having to rent space because we’re maxed out. That’s the next big thing for us is a new facility with more space under the roof.

What’s the timeline for that and where?
Next fall. (Partnership Industrial Center) West. It will close within 30 days, and the architect is working on drawings for the building. It’ll be about three times what we have here.

Do you anticipate an ability to expand workforce with the move?
Over time we do hope to grow our fabrication side of our business. We don’t fabricate the glass – we order that from other vendors – but we fabricate all the frames. As those are getting bigger to hold the bigger glass, they take up a lot more space as we build them. We just need more space. Looking at the cost of the raw materials, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ tracking looks like in the last year or so prices have leveled off, but costs are up about 25% in the last four years.

What have you seen, and do you anticipate stabilized prices to continue?
Pre-pandemic to now, our stuff is more than double in total. That’s material and labor. In the last year to even a little longer than that, 18 months probably, our material has been relatively stable. It’s still on an uphill climb, but it’s not that straight up curve like it was.

What innovations are you seeing in glass products?
There are more neutral glass selections for the exterior. Like our building here, the glass appears black when you drive up to it. That historically has been the best way to protect against solar heat gain is just really dark glass, but the technology is improving in the glass coating. Now we’re able to give closer to that end of the spectrum performance with glass that’s not nearly as dark tinted, so you can see in and see out. It lets the architects display the inside of the building from passersby and makes the building just more attractive to have a more neutral color glass. One thing that we are seeing a little more of is privacy glass inside. Say a conference room, if the front wall was all glass, you flip a switch and it turns to frosted.

You hinted at workforce challenges, and that is something you focus on as vice president of the Springfield Contractors Association board. What are you seeing as far as our local workforce pool?
With glass, we’re really no worse off than we’ve ever been because as a trade, ours has less crossover than any others. There are carpenters that work in concrete, drywall, cabinets, trim carpentry. The crossover is just not there in glass because our trade doesn’t work in other complementary trades, nor do we have a residential component. It’s always difficult for us to find and get glazing help. We just have to be looking all the time. In one sense we’re also better off because with some of the political unrest in some of the other states, people are moving to Missouri. Doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on, it’s just less extreme in Missouri. We’ve actually obtained a few glaziers in the last few years just because they wanted to get out of political turmoil. Now the other trades, anything that’s labor intensive is a tough thing. Laying bricks, concrete work. There is a group of concrete folks that have just started their own apprenticeship program. Advanced Concrete and Donco3 have created an accredited apprenticeship program. They are developing their own workforce. Other things that are being done out there, just to try to create some exposure and improve the image of construction, SCA works really hard on a project every summer called Build U where they bring high school kids and just take them around all week to different places to give them a taste of each of the trades.

What’s your entry-level pay?
I can’t imagine we would start anybody any less than $22 an hour. And that’s with union benefits on top of that, so full health insurance and a full pension plan. Overall, my perspective on the construction economy and the construction industry around here is I feel blessed that it is just busy, busy, busy. The projects seem to be coming at a quicker pace than they were even six months ago. I think people were a little reluctant not knowing which way interest was going to go, but as soon as people heard that the interest was going to start ticking back down, the projects just started accelerating again. I’m very optimistic. There’s no reason to question the construction economy with what we can see today.